


Ghost Watch: Behind the Scenes

by srmiller



Series: Ghost Watch [2]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Bellarke, Family Angst, Family Fluff, From Beyond the Grave, Gen, Modern Universe, alternate POV, ghost adventures/hunters au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-09
Updated: 2015-11-09
Packaged: 2018-04-30 19:42:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,155
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5177318
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/srmiller/pseuds/srmiller
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jake Griffin has been dead and haunting his daughter's house for the past 3 years and it's not until her roommates call a paranormal investigation show, Ghost Watch, to investigate their supposedly haunted house that Jake gets the chance to see the one thing he thought his death had assured him he'd ever get a chance to witness: his daughter finding a way to be happy again and, if Jake was lucky, meet the one person he could trust to take care of his little girl</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ghost Watch: Behind the Scenes

**Author's Note:**

> i don't think it's necessary to read the first part of this series to read this one, but it might help to put the conversations in context of what the living are doing while jake's going around haunting everyone

Jake smirked as he watched his daughter walk out of the living room after insisting to her roommates there was absolutely no such thing as ghosts.

He couldn’t find it in him to be insulted. As much as Clarke was his daughter, with her gentle heart and creative hands, she was just as much as her mother’s with her cynical and scientific mind.

She’d need absolute proof he was there and he wasn’t sure he was capable of giving that to her. Wasn’t sure if it was the right thing to do.

As he followed her out of the living room he suddenly found himself in his daughter’s room two days later, a symptom of being dead and haunting was he had no control over time and often found himself skipping over days or weeks, pulled by some unknown force from one moment to the next.

A glance at the computer on her lap told him it was well past midnight and she should be asleep.

She had class tomorrow.

But instead of sleeping she was watching something on Netflix, her headphones covering her ears and a blue glow illuminating her face. He swiped his hand across the mousepad, something he was sometimes able to manipulate. At the top of the screen he saw “GHOST WATCHERS: SEASON 1 EPISODE 5: THE WIDOW’S WALK.”

His daughter muttered something under her breath and moved the mouse again to remove the title. As she shifted on her pillows to get more comfortable a man with warm skin, freckles, and a dark mass of curly hair grinned from the laptop’s screen.

He sat in the front passenger seat of a van, turned around, facing the camera which bounced and moved as if it was held in someone’s hand. “And that’s why they call it a widow’s walk.”

“That was a terrible story, you shouldn’t talk anymore,” a blonde haired man moaned from the driver’s seat while Clarke smiled in her bed.

“He’s such a nerd,” she murmured to herself. Jake remembered when she’d been thirteen a new girl had come to her school and Clarke had come home with the exact same smile.

Even though she didn’t know he was there, this was something he could share with her so he laid down next to her on the bed and watched as a group people, all barely adults, went around the world trying to talk to ghosts.

After realizing he was dead, Jake quickly learned there were things he knew now he wouldn’t have known when he was alive.

Alive, Jake Griffin would have been suspicious of the man who had shown up on his-or rather his _daughter's-_ doorstep a few days later with a perpetual smirk, torn up jeans and his metal cases full of experimental equipment he used to search for the paranormal. Dead Jake instinctively understood the gangly, freckled TV host was a good man. The kind of man who would die for his sister and held onto his beliefs with every particle of his soul.

Jake also quickly realized this was the kind of guy who didn’t trust his heart. When a loud sound jarred his daughter and the ghost investigator out of a quiet moment in Clarke's studio, Jake decided to take matters into his own hands and essentially locked the door.

It might be considered petty or childish, but Jake had a feeling he couldn’t quite explain, one which told him he needed to keep these two together for as long possible.

“What’s wrong?” Clarke asked when she saw Bellamy try to open the door.

“Nothing, the door is locked.”

“This door doesn’t even have a lock on it,” she informed him with mild exasperation before attempting to open the door herself to no avail. “Not again.”

Bellamy stood a little straighter and Jake couldn’t miss the spark of interest in his eyes. “Again? This has happened before?”

Clarke barely gave him a glance as she tried the door again. “I thought I wasn’t supposed to taint your perspective with anecdotal evidence?”

Bellamy shrugged, “I’m kind of the boss so if I say it’s okay to tell me it’s okay to tell me.”

She shook her head, “I’m not encouraging you.”

His grin was all mischief and amusement as he leaned close as if to impart a great secret. “You should know your not telling me something just encourages me more.”

“You’re a pain in my ass.”

He shrugged, clearly unoffended. “Surprisingly, you’re not the first person who has said that to me.”

“Not really that surprising,” she quipped back but she was fighting back a smile.

“Tell me when this happened before. No judgement.”

Jake listened as she told Bellamy about an incident a few months before when a guy had come to pick up Clarke and for a few minutes had been unable, with her roommate’s help, to let the guy in.

It had been the ghost instinct, or whatever it was, which told Jake not to let him in. There had been something about him which had rubbed Jake the wrong way. What was ironic because if he'd been alive, Jake was pretty sure he would have loved the guy. Clean cut, even if his hair was a little on the long side, going to school to be a lawyer. A polite guy, with a good car and a firm a handshake.

What he also had was a careless heart. He hadn’t intended to hurt anyone, but his negligence had left Clarke feeling like the other woman when he’d failed to properly break up with his former girlfriend and there was a part of Jake which wanted to protect her from the heartache.

Clarke explained she believed the door had just been warped but Bellamy had seemed unimpressed by her conclusion and more than a little irritated some guy had hurt her.

“He was cheating on you?”

“I think he was cheating on her,” Clarke corrected. “He thought he’d broken up with her, she did not agree.”

“Someone’s looking out for you,” Bellamy concluded, leaning against the door to match Clarke’s stance. Jake had to hand it to him for guessing right on the first try.

“You think some spirit is hovering in my house protecting me from douchebags?” And if the dry tone reminded Jake of his wife with an little ache of longing he was used to it.

“Haunting.”

Clarke rolled her eyes at the correction, “You’re insane.”

Jake smiled at their interactions, parry and thrust as if they were fencing and apparently having a fine time.

Then he blinked, and to his annoyance, he was no longer standing in the sun lit room on the first floor but in the hallway of the second floor in the pitch dark.

“Damn it,” Jake muttered as he walked across the floor, his boots pounding on the wood with frustration and below him he heard a female voice.

“Did you hear that? Someone is upstairs.”

Pausing, Jake wondered if it was possible they could hear him. It happened sometimes when he was feeling particularly agitated or angry. Emotions made him stronger.

A radio crackled. “Bellamy, what’s your location?”

“I’m in the basement, why?”

“Nathan and I heard someone upstairs on the second floor.”

“Check it out.”

A moment later a brunette girl came up the stairs, a dark man with a camera following close behind her.  

“Hello?" she called. "Is anyone up here?”

There was a pause as if they were waiting for him to answer but Jake figured it was kind of pointless to respond when they couldn’t hear him.

“We’re sure this place is empty?” she asked the camera man.

“Yep.”

Things he knew about these people came in quick, bold flashes. The young man was still a boy inside, one trying to earn his father’s respect. He had no idea he'd earned the implicit trust of anyone he met. In another time he’d have sat at the right hand of a king and have been equally respected.

The girl, on the other hand, was someone who was born to live. Bright and wild, she was the sort of person made to jump out of planes and fall recklessly in love, who drank too much and fought too hard and wanted too much because there was so much to experience and a hundred years wouldn’t be enough time to live it all.

But an appetite for life hadn't made her foolhardy. She walked cautiously down the hallway, wary of what might be hiding in bedrooms or around corners.

Reaching into her pocket, she pulled out a small black rectangle. Almost immediately, Jake felt an uncomfortable tug in his gut. When the small light from the camera shone on the object, he recognized it as a recorder.

“If someone’s here, please tell us your name.”

Jake stepped towards the knight and the warrior, noticed the friendly and comfortable lack of distance, the quick catch of a gaze and silent communication. He could tell, instinctively, these were people who knew each other, these were people who trusted and cared for one another.

The insight death provided never ceased to amaze him.

“Holy shit!” the young man yelled, shifting to move away from where Jake had been standing.

Startled, Jake realized his hand would have brushed against the younger man's hip.

“What? Are you okay?” the young woman asked.

“It felt like someone just touched my side,” he bit out. “Shit, man, that was weird.”

The woman reached out to the space Jake had been standing moments ago, “It’s cold here. Do you have temp?”

“Uh, here. Take the camera.”

They switched the handheld and Jake watched as the man took a thermometer, the kind you pointed at an object to take its temperature, and Octavia gasped.

“It’s ten degrees cooler there.”

She convinced her friend to take the recorder as she filmed him. Jake smiled as the boy awkwardly asked questions to the empty space Jake had occupied. He thought seriously about answering but for some reason he held back.

Or at least, he did until the other man asked, “Can you show yourself?”

Jake scoffed, “If I could, do you really think I’d show myself to you and not my daughter?”

He blinked and there was another shift. Suddenly, Bellamy was standing there, camera at his side as they listened to the recorder. Jake was shocked to hear his own voice on the tape.

This shit actually worked?

“What is that? It’s not a word.”

“It sounds like a scoff,” Nathan suggested from behind the camera.

Brother and sister repeated the word as if they’d never heard it before.

“Yeah you know, like when you ask someone a question and they just scoff because the question is stupid?”

Bellamy looked at his friends and suggested they do EVPs. Even though Jake didn’t understand exactly what an EVP was, he was willing to try now that he knew there was a chance of something actually getting across to the living.

To Clarke.

To Jake's amusement, Bellamy went to Clarke’s room. He wondered if it was on purpose or if something had drawn the ghost watcher to Clarke’s personal space. Either way, Jake followed him and stepped through the closed door to see long fingers brushing over the knick-knacks his daughter had collected on her dresser.

Jake recognized most of the photos around the room; they ranged from elementary school pictures to ones taken just before he died.

He knew it was still hard for her, making new memories and relishing life now that he was dead. He knew part of it was she felt guilty, but he also knew his daughter hated making memories she couldn’t share with him.

Jake wished he could tell her it was okay to be happy. Tell her she'd always have him with her and he'd be a part of every new memory she made. He couldn’t move on until he knew she was okay. She'd always been his sunlight. He wanted to make sure she learned how to shine again before he walked away to whatever came next.

Bellamy smiled at a Halloween picture from when Clarke was 19.  Her friends had insisted on a “Ten Year Old’s Halloween Party” theme so everyone had shown as firemen and Power Rangers, Disney characters and pirates. At the time Jake had been surprised at how much his daughter had gotten into it. Maybe they’d both known somehow they didn’t have much time left. Either way, his reserved and careful daughter had insisted he help her find the most ten year old costume on the planet.

They’d gone through dozens of costume stores and websites, rejecting police uniforms and doctor’s scrubs, ninjas and angels until Jake had stumbled across a store advertising winter formal dresses. There in the window had been the perfect costume.

The day of the party, while the plantation house was getting its final touches, Clarke had done her hair and makeup. At precisely ten o’clock, when the house was full with friends and family laughing and having fun, Jake had turned off the lights so the only ones lit were on the staircase and his beautiful daughter came down the stairs.

With a tiara tucked into her gold hair and her blue dress with so much tulle it was almost as wide as the staircase, she came down looking every inch the beautiful Cinderella.

They’d never given out costume awards but everywhere he went that night everyone had declared Clarke was the winner by a landslide.

She’d hung the dress on her wall until he died and then she’d taken it down and tucked it away in her closet. There was a part of him which hoped she’d take it out and wear it again someday.

Bellamy brushed a finger down the frame of the picture, surrounded on either side by pirate Jasper and Mad-Scientist Monty, her grin wide and her tiara slightly askew. “Looking good there, princess.”

But then he seemed to remember he was there for a reason. Stepping away from the pictures, he set his camera on the nightstand, sitting far enough away on the bed to be in frame, then pulled a circular device from a bag on his shoulder.

“This is called a Voice Box,” Bellamy explained to the room. Jake wondered how long it took for them to get comfortable talking to what might possibly be an empty room but he was glad for the tutorial.

“It’s not a clever name, I know.” Bellamy continued, "What it does is it allows us to hear in real time, unlike a magnetic recorder, and it scans frequencies to prevent it from picking up things like walkies or radios. This way, when you talk to me, the sound comes over multiple frequencies and skeptics can’t say it was just the neighborhood boy playing GI Joe.”

Jake smiled, Bellamy said ‘skeptic’ with more than a little affection and knew he was talking about Clarke.

When he stepped closer to the device Bellamy had set on the table, Jake wished he was capable of picking up a set of tools and taking it apart to see how it worked. “Whoever you’ve got making these things aren't idiots.”

“Okay, let’s get started.” He switched on the device, which all but filled the room with white noise. “Is there anyone here with me?”

Jake sighed. If his daughter could make a grand entrance in front of all her friends and her parents’ friends as Cinderella, he could talk to some kid ghost watcher.

Even if he did feel like an idiot.

“Yes.”

But nothing happened, no voice came through the box and Bellamy didn’t give any indication he’d heard anything.

“Why are you still here?”

“For Clarke,” Jake bit out, irritated he’d let himself think the box might actually work.

Bellamy’s eyes slid to the device, and while Jake hadn’t heard anything different in the white noise the other man apparently had.

“My name is Bellamy. Can you tell me your name?”

He thought about not answering, he thought about walking away and leaving these kids to their gadgets and adventures but he knew this was his one and only chance to get a message through. If it wasn’t these kids, it wouldn’t be anyone.

“Jake.”

They both jumped when half a second later Jake’s voice came through the box, static filled and crackling but his voice.

“Holy shit.”

Jake had to agree.

Bellamy’s wide eyes scanned the room but apparently saw nothing because he looked back to the device as if not quite believing his ears. “Jake? Jake, what are you doing here? Why are you here in this house?”

Jake tried to reply but something was different, he could feel the connection to the room, to Clarke, waver. He remembered this happening one other time.

He’d found himself in Clarke’s room while she’d been sleeping and forgetting he was dead (it happened sometimes) he reached out to brush the hair away from her face like he had when she was a kid. Suddenly, he was talking to her. Laughing with her. An old memory, one from when she was a child. In the dream, though, they were older, but as they'd done in the past, they ate waffles and talked about little league.

Clarke had woken up and told her friends about the weird dream she’d had of her father and how real it had felt.

Jake hadn’t been strong enough to hold on to any single moment. He floated in and out her life for months before he was steady enough to control it. Right now he could feel that weakening which would pull him out of this moment and he couldn’t be sure how far in the future he might reappear.

But it seemed Bellamy was as unwilling to give up as Jake, because he kept asking questions, one after the other with a kind of intensity Jake could almost tie himself to.

“Is there something I can do for you?” Bellamy asked and there was such sincerity in his voice Jake couldn’t help but be a little awed. “Is there something you’d like for me to do?”

He’d been holding on for too long, Jake suddenly realized. Three years of hanging around his daughter and it never occurred to him one of these days he might not be there to watch out for her. To love her.

He didn’t want her to be alone.

“Take care of her.”

Not all of the words came through and before Jake slipped away from the moment he saw Bellamy get up and yell to his friends in the other rooms. Jake could only hope he got the message right.

##############################

When he came through again it was the next afternoon, which was better than Jake could have hoped for.

He was standing in her studio surrounded by her beautiful works of art. He rolled  his eyes when he saw the oil painting she’d done of them (inspired by a photo her mother had taken) back on the floor.

For years he tried to get her to understand he was there by moving the one painting he seemed to be able to touch and putting it on her easel, but she always wrote it off as something she’d done and forgotten about it.

Sometimes he wanted to shake his daughter until all the logic fell out.

It wasn’t until he looked over his shoulder he saw Clarke sitting on the loveseat with Bellamy pressed against her side, their fingers tangled together as they stared at the screen of a laptop.

“Care of her,” Clarke was saying and it was then Jake realized Bellamy was showing her the tape from the night before. Their conversation explained why he’d pulled back to this particular moment instead of another one.

“I can take care of myself,” she bit out when Bellamy explained what he and his crew believed the voice, Jake’s voice, had meant.

“Just because you can doesn’t mean you should have to. Asking for help, accepting help, doesn’t make you any less strong,” Bellamy pointed out. Nothing could have eased Jake’s heart more than hearing those words come out of someone who seemed to honestly care for his daughter.

“Can I have this?” she asked Bellamy after he told her there wasn’t any more evidence to show her.

“Of course.”

She leaned into him, bumping her shoulder with his. “I’m sorry I didn’t believe you.”

“I’ll forgive you if you say on camera I was right and you were wrong.”

When Clarke laughed, her face lit up even though she was still on the verge of tears, Jake could feel a part of himself find peace. “I’m not sure I’m willing to go that far. But I will say thank you.”

There was a pause as she met his eyes. “Thank you, Bellamy.”

“You’re welcome.”

When Bellamy reached up Jake saw him brush away a stray tear and he suddenly felt as if he was intruding on a personal and private moment. But how many men got to see the moment his daughter started falling in love?

But instead of kissing her Bellamy pulled back and the moment shifted from warm and personal to something more professional. Jake kind of wanted to hit him.

“If you were looking for the opportune moment that was it,” Jake muttered to himself.

Bellamy stood up and started babbling about the show as he picked up his laptop and prepared to leave while Clarke studied him from her place on the couch, looking confused and a little lost.

“I’ll see you in about an hour,” he said, reaching for the door. Since Jake knew after the exit interviews the crew would walk away and that would be that, he decided he’d give both his daughter and the watcher a nudge in the right direction so when Bellamy turned the knob Jake put all his focus and concentration on the door and held it shut.

“The door’s locked,” he announced and sounded so thoroughly baffled Jake couldn’t help but laugh.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Jake heard Clarke mutter as she got off the couch and tried to open the door herself. This was one thing Jake had learned to do well, so she couldn’t do it either.

Bellamy and Jake both heard her gasp at the same time and while Bellamy turned to face her Jake couldn’t help but smile because of course Clarke would figure it out first.

“What did you say after my dad gave his name?” she asked him, her eyes looking up into his. “You asked him if there was anything he’d like you to do and he responded-”

“Take care of her,” Bellamy finished and there was the look of the pieces finally fitting together.

Jake knew from phone calls and conversations Clarke had in the house Abby had grieved and moved on. While the fact she'd moved on with their longtime friend felt odd, Jake couldn’t begrudge Abby had found a second chance at happiness, either.

He wasn’t sure how it happened, but as he looked at his daughter and this man he knew would be important to her, he saw a hundred memories which hadn’t yet happened flash in front of him.

Bellamy kissing Clarke goodbye and promising to call her as soon he checked into his hotel. Clarke dancing in her living room with her new friends. A vicious fight in her bedroom, which now included a man’s leather jacket and his things in her closet.

He saw an engagement ring in nervous hands and then he saw his daughter pregnant, surrounded by her artwork and elegantly dressed people with champagne in their hands.

Unlocking the door, Jake threw open the window, letting the breeze, cool and clean, sweep into the room and let go the last of his fears and worries. He knew now those were what had tied him to this place. But now he knew with a certainty he didn’t question not only was his daughter going to be okay, she was going to be happy.

“Do you feel that?” Bellamy whispered as he tucked a dancing strand of blonde hair behind Clarke’s ear.

She smiled as she grabbed his jacket-the same leather one which would be draped over the end of her bed in the future Jake realized-and pulled him towards her. “Yeah, yeah I do.”

When they kissed Jake watched for a moment before closing his eyes. In the way he used to pass from one moment to the next, he moved from one plane to another. Even as he felt the warmth and peace of what he knew must be heaven he heard a whisper in his ear.

Like a ghost.

“Did you feel that?” Jake heard Bellamy ask, a smile in his voice.

“Yeah,” Clarke answered on a soft laugh. “Yeah, I did.”

 


End file.
